Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My grandfather was a very wise man who came from Europe many years ago. He passed away. With his wisdom, even with very little education, he always had these very famous sayings and those resonated even today. One of his famous sayings was, talk is cheap; whiskey costs money. I think it is only befitting that I bring that forward today. Not that whiskey costs money but addictions cost money. Talk is cheap; addictions cost money.
With that, I want to find out from the Minister of Health and Social Services, he mentioned earlier the spending of $300,000 towards addictions treatment. Can the Minister tell us what exactly are we getting today for that $300,000?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
The work of the addictions forum is laid out in their terms of reference and also a document that we’ve produced with the supports in there and everything. What we’re hoping to gain from that is a good plan on how we’re going to move forward on addressing the issue of addictions.
That’s a pretty large number for updating a plan. I think we’ve already got a mental addictions treatment plan, so now we’re going to have a plan with a plan. Again, talk is cheap; addictions cost money.
Can the Minister indicate to us what kind of plan we are going to have? I was very bold; I had a five-point plan today and brought it to the House here. We’ve only heard, really, to this date on this side of the House the Minister’s one-point plan, which I mentioned earlier.
Can the Minister allude to the House here, do we have more than just a one-point plan? Can the Minister allude to his multi-point plan that he wants to table for us in the House?
If I knew what the plan was I wouldn’t hire a bunch of people to go into the communities to check with the communities what they think the issues with addictions are, and how they think that the addiction issues should be addressed in the communities. The group, in my opinion, in a very short time period have to travel around to the communities. The plan is to come back to this government to what the communities think would be the most effective method in addressing addictions in their communities. That is what we want to move forward with.
I believe the plan is probably embedded in the archives of our Legislative library here, and I’d be more than happy to give my library card to the Minister to go and use that.
Can we get an idea here how many of our citizens are we sending down south for addictions and detox treatment?
I don’t have that information with me. I think it’s a fair amount of people. We’ve come back for supps to the Legislative Assembly on an annual basis for southern placements and so on for addictions. It does go through the Territorial Southern Placement Committee, so the committee would then determine that an individual would go down. But the exact number, I don’t have with me today, but I can provide that to the Member if he wishes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We recently enjoyed the budget dialogues with the Minister of Finance throughout the Territories. We were told in the House and we were told in many of these meetings that people are gravely concerned about addictions and money put towards it. In fact, sometimes, when people were doing the Lego exercise with the Minister of Finance, there were Legos left over. They said, we want to put it into addictions. Again, I am holding Legos in my hand for health and social services.
How much money are we going to be putting towards next year’s budget towards addictions? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The amount of money we put towards addressing addictions issues is going to be determined by the House. We are going to go through a process, a business planning process. We will make a business case for what we find, our findings. We will have some findings as a result of this committee. Once the forum has done their work and we have our plan in place specific to that, then it will go through the business planning process. The number will be determined by the amount of work that needs to be done at the community level. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
